Pallet run, roof painting, grass seed laying, and vine removal.

We still have to take it easy on our bandwidth till the first. Thus we are not posting daily for a bit.

We have spent everyday outside till today. We started Tuesday with removing roots in the front yard to lay down grass seed and burning. We spent hours pulling roots and got a decent size square seeded.

When we came in I told Trinity to take of her shoes and socks and put them up. I should have said away because…

She put them on the kitchen island! LOL

Then we spent time with the chicks and lovey spent time in my lap.

The chicks can jump and fly a little. The desire to perch is stronger at night so we do head count right before bed and then every time we wake up to make sure they are still in our brooder. We really need to put a screen top on it. We will tomorrow as we just need to cut it from the supply over at the cottage.

Wednesday we started painting the roof, removed some vines from the trees and burned some more.

We got the roof 1/4th painted with the Kool Seal and got one tree free from vines. We also got more of the front cleared of mulch and almost kept up with burning as fast as we were adding wood. Most days we add more than we burn. At the current rate we will be burning all summer and fall before we catch up. We use a burn barrel and have not done a bonfire yet. I am a bit skeptical at our abilities to contain the bonfire. We will be using some of the wood to cook outside more and more so it is possible we will one day empty the burn pile. We also picked up some barbed wire and cinder blocks. The barbed wire is to start fencing and the cinder blocks are to raise the floor of the coop. We all got a little sunburned and worn out from the heat.

Today we started by making bread and crackers! My bread came out with an almost perfect crust, golden and crunchy while the inside was moist and soft. This is my first attempt at Ritz style crackers and boy are they loved!

The recipe made three times this amount and at 3pm which is snack time we had less than this left. Total cook time this morning was 3 hours. I figure if I make crackers daily then I could keep up, but for now we will continue to buy some. Although I am able to do more I still push so hard I wear myself out and spend a day resting or sleeping. I also find it hard to sleep with the chicks chattering and flying around. So my sleep has skewed usually between 3am and 10am instead of 10pm and 5am.

Now for our chicks. Our oldest is 15 days and our youngest 11 days. At approximately 21-28 days you can start to see the waffle and comb start to be fairly pronounced in roosters. Now we have speculated since hatch we might have 3-4 roos. I have researched more and here’s where we are 6-13 days before we should actually see a marked difference. Please keep in mind that until a chicken lays eggs you can never really tell if it is a hen or a roo, especially with mixed chicks as ours are. So all this speculation is done with that in mind. Here is our photo shoot and speculation for today.

I originally thought the black to be male based on coloring, but that changed as its coloring changed. Now the black has its waffles started, these are located at the jaw on the bottom. So in this photo it looks like the bottom beak just continues. The comb which is on top is also getting large. These changes lean this chick back to roo.

This is one of the three we thought where roos based on feathering speed, which is the slower they feather the more likely a roo. The waffles are showing but this ones comb is not as well-defined, perhaps in a week we will be able to tell better. We are still leaning towards roo.

This is one of our lighter chicks and we are leaning towards hen.

Lovey and although there are waffles showing there isn’t a comb to speak of, so we shall see in a week. Still leaning towards hen.

Our striped one. Comb and waffles showing red, still hoping this is a hen and not a roo which its feathering and initial markings showed. But we will check again in a week, the red coloring showing up is leaning this one towards a roo.

Our dark brown, slow feathering chick we think is a roo. But here you can see no definite waffles or comb, still leaning towards roo, but we shall check in a week.

Our blond we think is a roo from feathering, and those waffles are showing but no comb.

One of our whites, we have 4 and yep there’s the waffles. We are not leaning one way or the other on the whites, they all feathered quickly.

Another of the whites, this one with a more pronounced comb and waffles.

And hahahah!!!!! This is our striped one lol very inquisitive bird!

As for what we will do with to many roos? Well hatch more and cull some. Now culling can mean give away or kill. I will try to give away but most likely based on the activity I see locally this will be more of a kill. Ratio alone states we should have 40-50% roos. We are thinking we have only 3-4 roos.

Now Trinity watched a paw patrol cartoon about a merpuppy and asked me for a mermaid tail. Trin and lil man both love paw patrol and so we are recording each episode so they can watch them when ever. They both still ask for bubble guppies, mickey mouse club house, teen titan go and gumball. Here is the design I have so far. I should have it done this weekend, right before my sis comes up!

Now we are having a taco night! So I am off of here to go enjoy our version of fast food!